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A history of chorological categories

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Abstract

One of the purposes of the research program referred to as “systematic biogeography” is the use of species distributions to identify regions and reconstruct biotic area relationships. The reverse, i.e. to group species according to the areas that they live in, leads to the recognition of chorological categories. Biogeographers, working under these two different approaches, have proposed several terms to refer to groups of species that have similar distributions, such as “element”, “chorotype” and “component”. A historical reconstruction, including semantic observations and philosophical implications, shows that these terms have been used in a variety of senses. The word “component” should not be used in biogeography. The word “element” has been used to identify both a group of species defined according to the biogeographic areas they occupy and a group of species with an assumed shared biogeographic history. It is especially because of the influence of the dispersalist paradigm, which dominated evolutionary thought until the mid-twentieth century, that the second definition has been frequently adopted. The term “element” is therefore ambiguous and its use should always be associated with an explicit definition. The word “chorotype” should be used to define groups of species with similar ranges when no causal assumption is made. The concept of “chorotype,” finally, should not be confounded with other concepts such as distributional pattern, cenocron, horofauna, biota, endemic area, area of endemism, biotic element, and generalized track, which are also discussed in this paper.

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Notes

  1. The expression “systematic biogeography” has also been used in a somewhat more restricted way to indicate the study of area homologues (statements of relationship among three or more biotic areas) and area homologies (the patterns “expressed” by area homologues); see Williams and Ebach (2008).

  2. This form of regionalization is based on taxic distribution and should not be confused with other forms of regionalization based on plant growth forms and types of vegetation, first introduced by von Humboldt (von Humboldt and Bonpland 1829; see Ebach 2015 for a discussion). Concepts such as those of elevational belts, latitudinal belts, biomes, life zones and biotic provinces (see Udvardy 1969 for a historical discussion) can be considered as derivatives of von Humboldt’s approach. Whereas regionalizations based on taxic distributions are heavily reliant on systematics and taxonomy, von Humboldt’s approach is based on eco-morphological criteria. Although Udvardy (1969) introduced the word “faunation” as a zoological counterpart of “vegetation”, it remained substantially ignored by zoogeographers.

  3. Note that the term “endemic area” (“the geographical area to which a taxon or biota is understood to be native”, Parenti and Ebach 2009, p. 253) refers to the distributional area of a taxon, so it is not equivalent to “area of endemism”.

  4. In analogy with hybridization between species, Morrone (2009) considers zones of biogeographic transition as events of biotic hybridization.

  5. Morrone (2009) defines “biotic components” as “sets of spatiotemporally integrated taxa that coexist in given areas, representing biogeographic units, from a synchronic or proximal perspective”. According to Morrone (2009), both areas of endemism and Croizat’s generalized tracks (see below, section “What is a chorotype?”) represent biotic components.

  6. In fact, La Greca attached a possible (but not necessary) historical interpretation to his chorological categories by assuming that species belonging to the same chorological category also probably shared a similar biogeographical history. In fact, ontological parsimony suggests that if several species have similar distributions, this should be explained by a common cause, rather than independent processes. This point of view is more ore less explicit in La Greca’s paper, but his followers preferred to avoid attaching a casual explanation to chorotypes. This implication was definitively removed by Vigna Taglianti et al. (1993), who used chorotypes as merely descriptive tools.

  7. Baroni Urbani et al. (1978, p. 42) used the expression “numerical chorotypes” to indicate small groups of species forming “elementary distributional patterns.” Then, they grouped chorotypes into larger groups (“basic types of distribution”). The two categories are identified as two different cut-off levels of the same dendrogram that grouped species according to their distribution. Because they are conceptually identical, Fattorini (2015) did not distinguish between them, and used the expression “regional chorotypes” also for Baroni Urbani et al.'s major groups.

  8. However, Hausdorf (2002, p. 651) specified that “biotic elements” are not necessarily generated by vicariance events, but can also originate via dispersal and speciation.

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Acknowledgments

I thank A. Di Giulio, J. Morrone and N. Passalacqua for many useful discussions; S. Müller-Wille and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous version of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L’Aquila, Via Vetoio, Coppito, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy

    S. Fattorini

  2. CE3C – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes/Azorean Biodiversity Group, Universidade dos Açores, Angra do Heroísmo, 9700-042, Açores, Portugal

    S. Fattorini

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Fattorini, S. A history of chorological categories. HPLS 38, 12 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-016-0114-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-016-0114-1

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